Scrum Summit
Solera Scrum Summit
Purpose
In 2016, Solera (a global conglomerate) went through a large organizational shift to align all companies within North America under the same engineering team umbrella. As one of the many steps in this large merger, the senior management team was responsible for evaluating current processes and strategically aligning all development team members under standardized processes and toolsets.
Stats
63 Participants
10 different companies represented
Training delivered to key members across 25 different development teams
Training was held in 4 key U.S. cities: South Jordan, UT, Addison, TX, Jacksonville, FL, and Roseville, MN
My Roll
As Director of UX I managed the UX Guild, which was a global resource for all development teams. I participated in weekly product review meetings for all 25 development teams, and from this interaction gained a very broad, unique view of the state of business across the board.
For this training program, I worked closely with my counterpart Craig Condie, the Director of Project Management Office. Worked worked together to evaluate our development processes and identify key focus areas. As we began to dive in to each team, we found an overwhelming set of process discrepancies, across the board. The differences were wide and in desperate need of standardization.
There were development teams following Agile Scrum principles, slower-moving Waterfall organizations, and every permutation in between. Teams were staging product releases anywhere between every two weeks and once a year.
It was clear that we had to standardize our development and release cadence as quickly as possible. It was vital to improving our efficiency, streamlining our release cadence, and managing our resources.
We determined that Agile Scrum would be the best methodology to employ and decided to implement an immersive training program as quickly as we could.
Conference Itinerary
Our itinerary included trainings for:
Introduction to Agile Manifesto
Scrum processes and best practices
Roles & responsibilities within a scrum team
Scrum ceremonies: Daily stand up, sprint planning, sprint demo, and sprint retrospective
Sprint planning practice
Product development resourcing and roadmapping
Tracking & Measures
Work Logs & Estimation
One of the most important components of a successful team is the ability to track past efforts. Doing so allows them to gauge their velocity and accurately load sprints against available resources.
From a financial side, accurate, properly documented work logs can be leveraged to account for CAP labor and R&D tax credits.
To educate our teams on these benefits, we offered an in-depth training for work logs and a transparent look into our project management tracking software. The team was able to see a full view of our current portfolio and understand the need for accurate work logs. At the close, they enthusiastically agreed to track their time and hold teammates accountable. Overall, this training built confidence in our staff’s ability to deliver product development efforts on time and on budget.
Team Building Events
Events included:
Team dinner and s’mores in the mountains
Rangers baseball game
Sand castle competition
Escape Room Challenge
As part of our training program, we took all of our teams offsite for morale building events. The best way to build communication is to give team members a pressure-free, fun environment to open up to each other.
Each of the groups we visited had a different, specialized events, all of which were selected and designed to build community and bring our employees closer together.
Return on Investment
Our training in Roseville, MN brought Identifix and Hollander team members together for the first time, even though they work within half an hour’s drive of each other. Team members from both companies enjoyed collaborating so much, that they now have standing meet ups each month to keep communication open.
As a result, we’ve had several joint-product initiatives which have leveraged the combined data from both companies. From these initiatives, two new products have gone to market and are being used by customers nationally.